It’s here – one of the most unlikely partnerships in the semiconductor industry. Long-time rivals Intel and AMD, battling out of x86 dominance for over 35 years, are now co-conspirators. Take one part Intel’s high-performance 8th generation processor core, one part with AMD’s efficient Vega graphics, mix together with 4 GB of HBM memory and sprinkle in some high-performance interconnect.

The new products are officially labeled as ‘Intel 8th Generation Core with Radeon RX Vega M Graphics’, although this will be shortened to ‘Intel with Radeon Graphics’ for ease of use.

Intel with Radeon Graphics is strictly speaking a new Intel specific product, to be marketed and distributed as such. Today’s official launch builds on the platform announcement made late last year, with added additional specifications, confirmation of the feature set, and a series of new products based on Intel with Radeon Graphics are set to be announced this week at CES from Dell, HP, and Intel's own NUC. Aside from the NUC, we've been told to hold the other vendor information until their embargo times have arrived.

As we explained in our previous coverage, Intel with Radeon Graphics uses an ‘H-series’ Intel central processor and an AMD Radeon graphics processor as two distinct bits of silicon on the same package (a multi-chip package). Intel is buying the graphics processor from AMD, much like any other silicon purchase, and as a result, AMD’s involvement is strictly business. The graphics processor part is designed by AMD’s semi-custom division that deals with custom designs, such as the chips that go into Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox line. The graphics is connected to high-bandwidth memory, specifically the second generation HBM (known as HBM2), and the connection between the two uses Intel’s new embedded multi-die interconnect bridge technology, or EMIB for short. In other words, Intel CPU + AMD GPU + HBM2 + EMIB – acronyms are ablaze with these new chips.

The new products are an expansion of Intel’s traditional mobile product segmentation, which up until this point has been known as ‘YUH’. The new products fall under the ‘G’ name, designed to combine the high-performance of a H processor with the versatility of a U processor. The overall list of five/six segments, including the desktop and extreme segments, now looks as follows:

X – A special segment for high-end desktops based on server processors

*May or may not have a separate graphics chip

The G-class Intel with Radeon Graphics processors being launched today are bigger than the standard processors that we would normally expect for mobile platforms, coming in with a TDP of 65W and 100W, although how power is managed between the two is part of Intel’s story with the new processors.

Without further ado, the specifications for the new parts are as follows:

Intel's 8th Generation Core Processors
with Radeon RX Vega M Graphics

Core
i7-8809G

Core
i7-8709G

Core
i7-8706G

Core
i7-8705G

Core
i5-8305G

CPU uArch

Kaby Lake

Kaby Lake

On-Package
Graphics (pGPU)

Radeon RX Vega M GH

Radeon RX Vega M GL

CPU Cores

4 / 8

4 / 8

CPU Base Freq

3.1 GHz

3.1 GHz

3.1 GHz

3.1 GHz

2.8 GHz

CPU Turbo Freq

4.2 GHz

4.1 GHz

4.1 GHz

4.1 GHz

3.8 GHz

pGPU Compute Units

24 CUs (1536 SPs)

20 CUs (1280 SPs)

pGPU Frequency

1063 MHz
(1190 MHz Boost)

931 MHz
(1101 MHz Boost)

pGPU Pixels/Clock

64

32

CPU PCIe Lanes

8 to Radeon Graphics
8 for Other Use

8 to Radeon Graphics
8 for Other Use

Chipset + PCIe

200-series derivative?
14-20 PCIe 3.0 Lanes

200-series derivative?
14-20 PCIe 3.0 Lanes

Package TDP

100 W

65 W

HBM2 Capacity

4 GB

4 GB

HBM2 Frequency

800 MHz

700 MHz

HBM2 Bit-Width

1024-bit

1024-bit

HBM2 Bandwidth

204.8 GB/s

179.2 GB/s

Quoted SP Perf

Up to 3.7 TFLOPS (SP)

Up to 2.6 TFLOPS (SP)

Intel HD Graphics

HD 630

HD 630

iGPU Frequency

Up to 1100 MHz

Up to 1100 MHz

DRAM

Dual Channel, DDR4-2400

Dual Channel, DDR4-2400

ECC

No

No

vPro

No

No

Yes

No

No

Overclocking

CPU, iGPU, pGPU, HBM

No

No

No

No

*Added Core i7-8706G on 1/8

Each of the new parts is a quad-core design using HyperThreading, with Intel’s HD 630 GT2 graphics as the traditional ‘integrated’ low power graphics (iGPU) for video playback and QuickSync. This is connected via eight PCIe 3.0 lanes to the ‘package’ graphics (pGPU) chip, the Radeon RX Vega M, leaving 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes from the CPU to use for other functionality (GPU, FPGA, RAID controller, Thunderbolt 3, 10 Gigabit Ethernet).

On the Radeon RX Vega M graphics, there is one version of the silicon for which there will be two variants: the ‘GH’ will be the highest part (H for high) with 24 compute units (1536 streaming processors), 64 pixels per clock, running at a base frequency of 1063 MHz and can boost up to 1190 MHz. The second variant is the GL part (L for low), with 20 compute units (1280 streaming processors), 32 pixels per clock, running at a base frequency of 931 MHz and can boost up to 1011 MHz.

Both pGPU Radeon variants will have access to 4GB of HBM2 as an immediate graphics memory (this is not available to the CPU as DRAM). With one stack of HBM2, this means a 1024-bit bus width, which for the GH parts runs at 800 MHz for 208.6 GB/s bandwidth, or for the GL parts runs at 700 MHz for 179.6 GB/s bandwidth. Intel likes to stress that this bandwidth is only possible due to its EMIB technology, as currently all non-Intel HBM2 products available require an expensive bulky interposer that adds z-height: by using EMIB, Intel claims, the performance is on par with an interposer without the added bulk or most of the cost.

Only the Core i7-8809G, the highest placed processor, will offer overclocking. Intel has defined this chip as able to overclock the processor core, the integrated graphics frequency, the package graphics frequency, and the high bandwidth memory frequency (as well as system level DRAM). Overclocking will be dependent on how the vendor implements the feature set and software: nominally Intel is stating that in Windows 10, the CPU/iGPU can be overclocked through Intel XTU software, while the pGPU and HBM2 will need AMD’s Radeon Wattman software. It is not clear if/when an Intel-specific version of the latter will be distributed, given that when asked where the driver/software stack for the Radeon graphics should come from, we were told ‘all the software will come from Intel, consider this a fully-enabled Intel processor’.

We confirmed with Intel that all the processors support VT-x and VT-d, and that none of the processors support ECC. Only the i7-8706G is vPro enabled.

Good Jobs. but still dissapointed. intel not use hbm2 as l4 cache and share processor graphics when user wants to use graphics card and acording to ark.intel . And it is still 4 cores not 6 cores like i7 8700kReply

It's a laptop chip first and foremost, and the best & latest Intel has in it's mobile line is 4c/8t Kaby Lake for power reasons (and the max 100W power envelope here precludes 6c/12t Coffee Lake already, even if a hypothetical mobile CL part existed). Not to be rude, but your expectations were totally unreasonable considering the primary target market (thin & light gaming laptops & mobile workstations).Reply

6c/12t would have been perfectly possible with Vega M under 100W. The catch is both the CPU and GPU wouldn't coexist well under full load. The end result would be a base clock lower than what Intel would have liked on both parts for that fully loaded scenario. Though under average usage (including gaming were 4c/8t was enough), turbo would kick in and everything would be OK.

The more likely scenario is that Intel simply didn't have enough time in development of this product to switch Kaby Lake for Coffer Lake in time and get this validated. Remember that Coffee Lake was added to the road map when Cannon Lake desktop chips were removed.Reply